Levelling Up the UK for a post-Covid recovery

Levelling up the UK to tackle poverty

The Salvation Army works in some of the poorest communities across the UK running foodbanks, providing shelter to the homeless and helping people to find work and manage their debts.

We are calling on the Government to invest its Levelling Up Fund in the most deprived areas to help local people move out of poverty.

What is the Levelling Up Fund?

The Government has made £4.8 billion available to local authorities across the UK as part of its ‘Levelling Up’ agenda to address regional inequalities.

We welcome the Government’s plan set out in its White Paper to increase opportunities, raise wages and provide decent housing in the UK’s most deprived communities. However, we are concerned that many of these communities have yet to benefit, even though half of the fund has already been allocated. We are urging the Government to rethink where and how the remainder of the money is invested so it helps those most in need.

How the fund can help deprived areas?

We are calling for the Government to:

Reconsider how funding is allocated from the Levelling Up Fund, to ensure investment is made in the most deprived communities.
Develop a new plan of investment to fund childcare so that parents can access work and training opportunities.
Invest in skills and employment support to help individuals out of low-skill, low-wage employment.
Engage with communities to identify what investment will best ‘Level Up’ their areas.

Our report ‘Understanding People, Understanding Places' showed that more than a third of England’s most deprived areas were at risk of missing out on Levelling Up funding.

Our Key Findings

Individuals said that the inability to access affordable childcare was a key factor in their ability to access or progress in employment. For some we spoke to, working to simply cover the cost of childcare wasn’t possible. One interviewee said:

“the provision of childcare is good, it’s getting access to it that’s the issue. It’s so expensive, I know a lot of mums who are basically working just to pay childcare...I get quite a lot of single parents who are like ‘I can’t afford to take this job because I can’t afford £300 [a week] for childcare’.”

Entry level jobs are hard to come by even in city areas where there are higher skilled opportunities.

High levels of unemployment due the pandemic has led to increased competition for entry level roles, making it harder for those without much previous experience, including young people and those who have been long term unemployed, to move into higher skilled entry level positions.

Recommendations

The efforts the Government has made in establishing the Levelling Up Agenda is promising and draws attention to the need to leverage communities that are at risk of being left behind.

We must ensure that the investment goes to the areas where the need is greatest, and that the funding is not just spent on big infrastructure projects like roads and bridges but on services that the communities need.